An Argument for the NBA

In which we offer a slightly unorthodox and utterly uncomprehensive preview of what will be the greatest hoops season ever (1984 included)

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Pro basketball has a problem, and the problem is this: It's actually meaningful.

Football is more popular, and baseball will always be more iconic. But both of those sports are inherently (and consciously) conservative; the greatest things about football and baseball are the things that never change. Basketball is different. Pro basketball changes with culture. It's a youth game, it's a street game, and it's an artists' game. Unlike football, its players have more control than their coaches. Unlike baseball, its style of play reinvents itself every five or ten years. Basketball is dynamic, and basketball is reflective; if you profoundly understand the NBA, you can partially understand America. This is why the NBA is important. This is also why aging fans inevitably conclude that they no longer like it.

The NBA nearly collapsed in the late seventies, simply because its fan base quit caring. (Racists saw a league that was too black; purists saw shoot-first cokeheads who never played defense.) Bird and Magic saved the league in the eighties, and Michael Jordan eventually made housewives in Idaho care about the philosophies of Tex Winter. But by the time M. J. was a desperate Wizard in 2001, the association had drifted into the New Apathy. The game became viscous and low scoring. The players seemed more athletic but less skilled. David Stern forged a marketing relationship with a musical genre he did not understand (hip-hop), inadvertently spawning a class of modern quasi stars who disturbed traditionalists and occasionally punched ticket buyers. For a time, it seemed as if anyone who authentically loved basketball couldn't love the NBA (and vice versa). Perhaps you lost interest in pro basketball during this period; if so, that's understandable.

I am unsure how the NBA became so interesting so quickly. I suppose the explanation doesn't matter as much as the reality, which is this: The league has never had this many transcendent players at the same time. Never. Kobe Bryant is probably the second-best player of all time, but he might be only the third-best player in the league. Dirk Nowitzki is arguably the third-best forward in the Western Conference and possibly the second-best forward who has ever lived. LeBron is Le-Bron, and he is about to become "LeBron." It makes no sense, but it's all true.

Right now, the NBA is made of madness. If there was ever a time in your life when an orange sphere passing through a metal hoop remotely mattered to you, it should certainly matter to you now.

Chuck Klosterman is the author of many fine books, including Chuck Klosterman IV which is available at your local bookstore or online, at BarnesAndNoble.com.